September 21, 2018

Good Afternoon Parents,

I hope you all had a fantastic week! This week in class, students have been learning so much from complex fronts/endings and vowel teams in phonics, plural nouns in grammar, and place values in math. Let’s talk about our week!

Reading: This week in Reading, students have been learning the importance of stop and jots. Stop and jots are when readers stop and think about what they have read and record a quick thought, prediction or question. We also use these moments to remind ourselves what we have read so far. Good readers learn when to stop after every couple of pages and remind ourselves what we have read so far. In addition to this, students explored strategies when the reading gets tough! We roll up our sleeves and never give up! There are so many strategies we can practice when we find ourselves in front of a word that is just too hard. Some strategies we have discussed are look for a word inside longer words – this can help us break the word apart. Also, we can look through the WHOLE word part-by-part and break up the syllables. We have discovered too that authors and illustrators work hard to give us powerful illustrations to help us comprehend what it is that we are reading. We can also look at illustrations to help us get over words and/or pages that may have confused us! Beginning next week, we are going to start exploring author’s intentions with books and why we believe author’s wrote different stories and why certain characters act the way they do! The content is getting good in reading!!

Writing: Students this week finished their second small moment. Students have been writing this small moment for about a week now. We are focusing in on 8 key elements in our writing.

1. Am I writing a true small moment? (Small moments should be stories that only take place within 5 – 20 minutes. Students can struggle with this concept as usually students want to tell you everything that happened during the whole day and/or activity. A small moment is just one small element of it.)

2. Does my story have a who? Can you clearly tell who my story is about? Do I use capital letters to distinguish my proper nouns?

3. Does my story have a clear “what?” The what is basically the jist of the story – can I tell what the story is about or do I have to infer what you are talking about.

4. Does my story have a clear setting? Am I describing it by using any of my five senses?

5. Does my story have a strong beginning, middle and end?

6. Do I have dialogue (talk lines as we have been calling them.)

7. Do I provide details that relate to emotions, feelings, and/or physical characteristics of characters?

8. Do I wrap my story up nicely without simply ending it with a “THE END?”

Next week in Writing, students are going to pick one of their two stories and we are going to dive deep into the editing process. We will be using a checklist of elements that must be present in our small writing examples. This final piece will be graded and put on your child’s report card. After this upcoming week, we will begin informational writing where we will implement technology into our writing! Exciting!!

Phonics & Grammar: This week in Phonics and Grammar, students have been focusing on what makes a noun plural. We have practiced our suffixes s, es, and ies. These are all present in our English language. Furthermore, students practiced complex fronts as their phonics spelling pattern of the week. This concept is when we have two or more consonants before the vowel in a word (ex: class, dress, troll, etc.) Next week in spelling, students are going to combine the past two weeks of complex fronts and complex ends. We will have one more week of these spelling patterns.

Next week’s spelling words: stack, track, snack, splash, strong, past thrill, bring, cloth, squint, should, clothes, strongly, bringing

Math: This week in Math, students used beans and unifix cubes to create groups of hundreds, tens and ones. We are investigating place value and how when we get ten ones, we have to create a new bar. This is when SHAPE MATH is coming into play. Parents – remember that if this concept is way over our head, please visit our YOUTUBE site and you can see my teach it! It is super easy and helps students see the visual representation of place value. Next week, students will be continuing their place value practice. We will be implementing Jack and Beanstalk to help us with different place value concepts to hook students.

Announcements:

1. Thank you so much to all of your support with the FUN RUN. We had so much fun last week running all of our laps. Gwen Zuber, thank you so much for making our great Class Dojo t-shirts! They looked fantastic! Today was the last day for Fun-Run money to be turned in, so if you turned that in, your child will get his/her goodies very soon!

2. The Pine Ridge Sportsmanship Contract went home this week and so far, I have received 19 of these back. You and your child must look over this contract and sign it in order to participate in recess at Pine Ridge. The contract discusses positive behavior that is expected outside and what consequences will happen if constant negativity is shown outside. If your child does not bring this contract back, they will sadly not be able to participate in any sport activities at recess. Thank you so much to those who returned them already!! If you have not seen this, please ask your child about it and if need be, I can print more.

3. Class Dojo has been a flying success this year. I am so excited that every parent is signed up for the app and has been participating in all areas of this app. Continue to check in daily to see our class stories and updates!

4. Volunteer Needed! I am in search of a parent who can come in on Mondays and Fridays. Please note that this parent must be available both days. This volunteer is called my “Fluency Parent.” What this task includes is giving students cold and hot reads. We will give students a passage at their level or slightly above it to challenge them. On Monday, they will cold read it – it is called cold because they have never seen the passage. All students will be timed and data will be collected on their speed. Students will have all week to practice this passage with YOU ALL at home. On Friday, they will have a fluency test and they will try to beat their score from Monday. This job is VERY EASY, but it just takes a bit of time. Please expect it to take at least 30 – 45 minutes. Thank you to those who will volunteer!! Please send me an e-mail at smulligan2@cherrycreekschools.org if you are interested.